Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 008 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, co-authored by Takashi Nagasaki, with the cooperation of Tezuka Productions
Oh, tell me it ain’t so … Can this REALLY be the final volume of Urasawa’s fabulous Pluto series? B-b-b-but … Urasawa’s Monsterwent on for 17 volumes, and 20th Century Boys is still going strong at volume 7 … how could Pluto already be finished with 008, boo hooo??!!
So read and weep, dear fans … even if they’re tears of bittersweet joy …
Final volume 008 opens with a newly reawakened Atom – with eyes so gorgeously haunting – as he finally solves the formula for the antiproton bomb, “a recipe for world destruction.” Atom’s been inserted with the late great p0lice-robot’s Gesicht’s memory chip, whose brutal final moments were marked by something robots aren’t supposed to feel – hatred. But as one of the world’s seven great super-robots, Gesicht’s capabilities went far beyond his actual programming. So, too, Atom’s abilities are limitless … even as he is the very last hope for the human race.
“Do you think we’ll ever live in a world free from hate?” he asks for us all. Urasawa’s thinly disguised treatise against the so-called ‘war on terror’ – the United States of Thracia vs. Persia – proves to be a remarkable, memorable eight-volume prayer for peace.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2010 (United States)
PLUTO © Naoki Urasawa/Studio Nuts, Takashi Nagasaki, and Tezuka Productions
Original Japanese edition published by Shogakukan Inc.
Based on Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka
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